Photo: Dia Dipasupil/Getty
Rob Reinerreally took one for the team.
In a joint interview for PEOPLE’sWhen Harry Met Sally… 30th Anniversary Special Edition, the director — with actressMeg Ryan(Sally) and Billy Crystal (Harry) — discusses having to demonstrate a fake orgasm in front of his mother to show Ryan exactly what he was looking for in thefamous sceneofWhen Harry Met Sally.
The trio reveals that Ryan thought the scene would be best in “some incongruous place, like a restaurant,” though it wasn’t originally written into the script of the classic romantic comedy.
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“It was written as a discussion of women faking orgasm,” Ryan explains to PEOPLE. “But Sally is a behaviorally funny character, how sheisis funny. So it was logical that she’d do it.”
They closed down the restaurant, Katz’s Delicatessen, to fill with extras when they went to film the iconic scene, but one was a familiar face for Reiner.
“We had the extras, the crew—a lot of people,” Reiner says. “My mother [Estelle Reiner] sitting there.”
“Rob kept giving me sounds, ‘More,aaauuuuhhnnnnnn!’All in front of Estelle,” Ryan tells PEOPLE.
Reiner’s mother was actually the woman in the deli who famously said at the end of the scene, “I’ll have what she’s having.”
“Billy, he added the biggest laugh in the movie, which is the biggest laugh in any movie I’ve ever been involved with,” Reiner says. “‘I’ll have what she’s having.’ My mother says that line.”
When Harry Met Sallycelebrates its 30th anniversary this year.
source: people.com
